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StarDate, the longest-running national radio science feature in the U.S., tells listeners what to look for in the night sky.
The Blue Danube has been performed for some pretty lofty audiences – kings and queens, emperors and empresses, presidents and prime ministers. But a performance earlier this year topped them all: it was aimed at the stars.
The waltz was composed by Johann Strauss II, who was born 200 years ago today. His birthday was one of the motivations for the performance. The other was the 50th anniversary of ESA – the European Space Agency. So the broadcast was mostly symbolic – not a real attempt to contact other civilizations.
The waltz was performed by the Vienna Symphony Orchestra in late May. It was transmitted to space by one of ESA’s tracking stations.
The waltz was beamed toward Voyager 1. It’s the most-distant working spacecraft in history – more than 15 billion miles from Earth – so far that it took 23 hours for the waltz to reach it. Voyager carries a golden phonograph record inscribed with several musical works – but not the Strauss waltz.
Voyager is passing through Ophiuchus, near the constellation’s brightest star, Rasalhague. It’s about half way up in the west-southwest at nightfall, and it’s easy to see. It’s a bit more than 48 light-years away. So if anyone there happens to point a radio telescope toward Earth in late 2073, perhaps they’ll hear the strains of The Blue Danube waltzing through the galaxy.
Script by Damond Benningfield
StarDate
StarDate, the longest-running national radio science feature in the U.S., tells listeners what to look for in the night sky.
